Most weeks I work overtime at my blue collar job. I also have 4 consistent side gigs and pick up a 5th + 6th when the opportunity arises. This Saturday I woke up at 4am, worked on side gigs, and rushed out the door to spend the evening with my libertarian and conservative friends in Massachusetts. We made food, played boardgames, and cherished the feeling of community. I then caught a ride to New Hampshire and spent a large part of Sunday collecting signatures outside of a grocery store to get Jeremy Kauffman on the ballot as a Libertarian candidate for US Senate. In the evening I hung out with my NH libertarian friends, caught a bus back to MA, and fell asleep with my boyfriend.  

 

I did the same last weekend, and I will do the same this weekend. I am tired.

 

Marc Clair brings up an important point: don't sink your efforts into the MC if the opportunity cost is improving yourself, your financial situation, and your preparedness to handle the next wave of tyranny. I agree with Marc. 

 

The libertarian moment isn't coming. Parents are voluntarily masking their toddlers - I think the appeal to reason is hopeless. The Libertarian Party won't save us, and neither will the Mises Caucus. (You know what helped me most during lockdown tyranny? A right-wing employer. I get hurt all the time, but the globohomo won't have my soul.)

 

However, I'm not an efficiency-maximing bot (beep beep boop boop), and sometimes I want to do things I'm not getting paid for. I can't speak to anyone else's potential reasons for contributing their time to MC. I believe in libertarian concentration... or at least my boyfriend and I want to move to New Hampshire so we can raise a family within a network of people who share our values. (The Amish have a point). The NH Libertarian Party is only a part of the Free State movement, but they play an important rule in shifting the Overton window for NH Republicans. I think balls-to-the-wall campaigns like Jeremy Kauffman's help with molding local culture like that. Also I want to see Jeremy shine, similarly to how I want to do potlucks and board games with my other friends.

 

I appreciate Marc's frustration with how too many of us liberty folk lament circumstances, and I relate - I sometimes want to yell at you guys when you discuss dating. Yes, the dating market is all kinds of messed up currently, but you won't lecture it into changing. You COULD make yourself more fuckable. It made me understand why Matt Erickson started saying that, yes, taxes are bad for XYZ reasons but ultimately "make more money."

 

I hope Marc's "don't roll up the sleeve" expression catches on. And I appreciate he doesn't berate people who weren't financially prepared to refuse the vaccine. Instead he urges people not to let themselves get cornered again, without sliding into LARPy boog rhetoric. I do kind of doubt that a large portion of MiCaucs can't afford to refuse the vaccine because they spend too much time doing MC things... but who knows, I think that's an interesting question! I can speak only for myself, and like the wahman I am I already said too much, so bye.